GREENSBORO, N.C. — "What's for dinner?"
"I don't know. what do you feel like?"
"Umm...I don't know. What do you think?" And it goes on and on until you're so Hangry you end up ordering pizza or eating a hodgepodge of whatever is in the fridge and pantry.
"Most of the time we don't plan ahead, and then that means we have to grab something quick and that tends to not be balanced, there's not a lot of nutrition there," said Katie Maxey, Registered Dietician.
Meal planning can not only help you eat healthier but save money too. Unfortunately, a lot of us look at the meal plan page and see all those empty spots to fill and we just can't muster up what we need to in order to do the meal planning.
2 Wants To Know has a few ways to help, thanks to technology.
USING CHATGPT FOR MEAL PLANNING
I typed in the words 'create a 7-day meal plan for under $100'. ChatGPT responded with a full paragraph, telling me it created a sample meal plan with cost-effective ingredients while providing a balanced and nutritious diet.
The ChatGPTplan gave me breakfast, lunch, and dinner options for each day complete with an estimated cost.
My total cost for the week was under the $100 mark and ChatGPT reminded me that this is a starting point and can be adjusted to dietary preferences.
One of the dinner suggestions was vegetable curry. I don't know how to make that so I asked ChatGPT for that recipe, and there is was, instructions and all.
I then asked for a grocery list for the seven days and ChatGPT put it in an easy format for me to use while shopping, dividing up the proteins and the produce and whatnot.
Artificial Intelligence can take the guesswork out and it does it within seconds.
But for it to really work for you, you'll want to give it detailed info about your eating preferences.
THE BUZZFEED QUIZ FOR MEAL PLANNING
Here's another a-i meal planning option..it's from BuzzFeed. you go through and answer five questions:
What's your weekly grocery budget?
How many people are you meal planning for?
What grocery store do you use?
What dietary restrictions do you have?
Are there any ingredients that you already have that you'd like to use up?
The BuzzFeed quiz takes a few seconds and generates results offering you a week's worth of meals and it automatically generates the grocery list for you.